Has it been one of those days?  Could you use a change in attitude?  Would you like to be grinning like the village idiot?  You need a dance break!

Pop in the new Phoenix CD, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, and listen to the first three songs, Lisztomania, 1901 and Fences.  The music has quirky lyrics, throbbing beats with a kind of an 80s electric vibe.  It’s happy, summer music.  Don’t forget Lasso, Girlfriend and Armistice as well.  Enjoy!

For the past few days I’ve been listening to this CD by Blind Pilot over and over.  From the very first refrain, I thought, “Road trip.”  This is fantastic, get moving music - I keep thinking I need to be listening to this while driving along the West Coast in a convertible with people I love and laughing ‘til it hurts.  Then I was amused to discover on their web site that this concept was in fact their touring strategy…but that is another story, the CD.

 The CD is a playful mix of quirky and softly vulnerable lyrics with unexpected pacing and instruments (horns, banjo, xylophone – what???…)  The boys of Blind Pilot are storytellers – twisting words and meanings, such as in “One Red Thread.”  It is haunting, hypnotic and sexy all at the same moment – when the narrator reflects on early selfish love by saying I remember, “When you were the savior, and I was the taker…”  You can feel his longing to be sure again of the love he was taking…for now he was being taken and unsure…

 Or “Two Towns From Me” with it’s dreamy, sing-along quality, “Had a dream you were two towns from me…got to sleep, spent the whole night running…”  Or in “The Story I Heard” with its toe-tapping rhythm and his pleading, longing words…Love this CD.  Ready for a road trip?  I am. Sounds like: The Thorns